Quick note:
This update (that I've written with my own hands) takes place after Flamer's instant ignition itself was implemented.
The general idea should still apply no problem, but just note that any potential inconsistency is for this reason.

For an improvement to a "confusing" and "controversial" change that also sparked confusion and controversies, I am here to provide some visual representations to both reinforce the ideas behind Instant Ignition, as well as to explain the improvement update.


The following graphs are not to scale. They are meant to represent a general idea.

Weapons normally deal amount of Friendly Fire damage that depends on how frequent have you been causing FF. The more you shoot your teammate, the more it hurts each incident. Simple as that.
Increase in difficulty leads to the rampup slope getting steeper. This means you have to fix your mistakes sooner by preventing further FF incidents quicker, before it begins to hurt too much, should the FF continue.



Flamer has a very low base damage, leading to extremely neglectable FF damage (since it's often 0's and 1's). Its hazard comes from the ignition when the grace period is spent. However, this grace period before ignition is generous enough to be easily exploited, creating this weird playstyle of using Flamer dangerously close to teammates like a Tesla Cannon. This leads to scenarios where players who accidently shot someone with one or two bullets get punished harsher than someone purposefully spewing blobs of burning flame through teammates.
Increase in difficulty decreases the grace period before ignition. This is how it affects the following two types of players:
- Inexperienced players who were convinced that throwing burning fire at teammate is safe get punished harshly due to the greater risk and hazard of ignition, especially considering the greater burning damage due to greater difficulty. If they haven't learned the means to extinguish teammates yet, the entire lobby is about to have a horrible time.
- Players who are committed to the playstyle this exploit creates are now required to be "extra careful" playing with the grace period. This means they either literally contribute less so they take less risks of ignition, or they forget about it altogether and completely disregard the safety of everyone around them. After all, keeping the user safe at the expense of everyone around is what Flamer is good at.



As you've seen the changelogs regarding this topic, the update enables instant ignition, ditching the grace period altogether, and instead scale the punishment via the afterburn duration instead.
This allows the total FF damage as punishment to behave in a similar fashion as the rest of the entire arsenal, in comparison to graph 1.
What this aims to ensure is the punishment of genuine accidents is not as harsh as hardcore FF's. After all, there is a reason why the other weapons' FF damage behaves as shown in graph 1 in regular FF setting. It wouldn't be fair if Flamer behaves practically as punishing as hardcore FF.



When it comes to increase in difficulty, the maximum duration that the burn can last increases.
The graph may look confusing as a function of matching variables with the other graphs, so you can simply think of it as this:
The sooner you ignite your teammate again, the longer it will last. The burn duration decreases over time, just like how your regular FF deals less damage after not dealing any FF damage after awhile.
Increase in difficulty means the burn will last longer compared to lower difficulty, when the ignition happens at the same time after the previous FF incident.



For those who properly uses Flamer and able to swiftly fix their mistake, if they do end up igniting a teammate, this update's impact should be minimal.
When a Flamer is properly used, amount of FF incidents should've already been minimal. Should genuine accidents happen, you would not be punished harshly thanks to the duration scaling. Should the FF incidents on the same teammate somehow becomes frequent enough to cause an afterburn that lasts a significant amount of time, quickly fixing the mistake can significantly cut down the harsher punishment, exactly like how you would before the update.

Yes, I believe this is indeed true and a very valid concern. However, I also believe this is totally okay.

- For inexperienced players, this is a significantly more apparent of a warning that firing your Flamer at teammate hurts them just like the rest of the entire arsenal (it's not an exception), compared to watching burning flames go through teammates and see zero reaction to it (unless you consider the damage of ~2 cut down to a small percentage before rounded to a whole number is a reaction).
- While it's true that there is a potential of teaching the wrong lesson that "burning is whatever," proofs to that being wrong is very apparent: Should they ever attempt to get careless with it, the longer burn duration would be very easy to be observed. Victims of longer burn duration can also react in any ways that can serve as a warning, which they are very incentivized to do so for their very own safety is at stake.

- For players committing to the playstyle exploiting the grace period, whether they choose to extinguish or not, their behaviors of purposefully throwing burning flames through teammate will not go unpunished. There is simply no way to deny the fact that none of the weapons (that are capable of FF) are meant to be fired at teammates. The solid damage dealt to their teammates serves as a much stronger incentive to simply stop shooting at their teammates, exactly like the entire rest of the arsenal.
- Additionally, they serve as a warning to victims of FF to act accordingly, now that the risk someone else put them into is much more apparent. Inexperienced players can also take this as a "bad example" and learn what not to do.

Besides language barriers, disabilities, or any sort of similar limitations,
the fact that something as simple as "shooting your teammates is no no, and flamer should not be an exception" must rely on more experienced players to teach is already a failure on the game's part.
Inexperienced players, for many potential reasons, may simply fail to comprehend the knowledge being laid upon them.
As for players committed to the exploit, what can you really say or do, if their mind is already set on the playstyle of everything is my team's problem and mine is to keep myself safe?

It was also mentioned that you can just teamkill them.
Intentional teamkill can be easily justified if the majority of the lobby already knows that the victim is someone who deserves it.
Otherwise, it creates conflict, toxicity, and can potentially shift everyone's blame on you.
Whichever the result is, it is no doubt a failure on the game's part if it has to rely on teamkills just to teach something as simply as what's mentioned above.

In the environment of casual ASRD, nobody is obligated to put this much effort into communication and nobody is obligated to fill the role of serving "police brutality" with teamkills.
There are games that base their core design on communication. ASRD is not one of them.


This is more of a "moral" thing rather than an objective statement, but I find it quite necessary to bring it up. You have all the rights to disregard this completely for that very reason.

Would you really believe that the behavior of leaving everything to all the teammates (who aren't also using a Flamer) to deal with is something to be encouraged to do so, with the existence of grace period before ignition to exploit?
It undeniably already had done so. Otherwise the problem would have never infested the game for years to begin with.

First of all, for those unaware, reckless flamer users had been a headache for a huge portion of the player base for many years before this update (probably even longer, since I'm pretty sure it was already an issue when I first started playing).
One of the main reasons being the usage of it within the proximity of teammates without care.

Prior to the update, flamers have this grace period (which scales with difficulty) where you deal practically no damage to teammates with the flamer until you expend that grace period, which leads to ignition that also scales with difficulty (meaning on low difficulties, you deal far less friendly fire damage than other weapons usually do).

This teaches this weird lesson where the flamer is an option as safe as Tesla Cannons (a very reliable stun support weapon frequently used across all difficulties, with a unique characteristic of not being able to deal any friendly fire), giving it an identity that it was never meant to have when new players get their hands on this weapon while playing low difficulties they started with.

This introduced a problem where these players grew the habit of using the flamer recklessly as if there are no consequences that the rest of the weapons have, which is untrue, especially when you go higher in difficulty where the grace period diminishes and the ignition causes more harm.
Everyone around these players was affected negatively.

Usually the reckless flamer usage in question leads to said players being told/informed about the harm they are inflicting upon their teammates. Should the player recognize the damage they cause, it should be a simple matter of either reserving flamer usage toward directions without teammates or simply looking into better/alternative options.

However, even disregarding players who just straight up do not look at chat, you have players who maybe cannot even understand the language they are being informed in, as well as players who are possibly too young (since, you know, this game is free to play) to comprehend such information.

But let's be real, these are not exactly common, not the real reason why using chat doesn't work.
The real elephant in the room is that you just simply do not have that many players who care about inflicting harm onto their teammates, especially if the difficulty is not that high, high enough to demand competent teammates to conquer the mission with.

Those unfamiliar with the weapon may wonder, what makes Flamer good enough to use anyways?

First of all, it's an excellent self-defense tool.
No matter how many drones are coming your way, they can all be hindered (emphasize on hindered and not immediately taken care of) by simply throwing flames in their direction. This means you can either ignite enemies and pass through the gaps between the drones, or simply kite them, given you have enough space to do so, and just keep back-pedaling until they die to fire damage over time.
It keeps you temporarily safe from groups of whatever size (for an amount of time that depends on difficulty, since how much the drones get hindered does scale with it).

Secondly, it's easy to use. Because flamer fires flame particles instead of hitscan bullets, it demands very little aiming skills.
Whenever you see threats coming your way, you can simply fire your flames in that general direction without being precise.

When you have enough space and no demand for killing efficiency, certain maps on low difficulties such as Normal or Hard can be solo'd by just using the flamer with relative ease.

Yes, all these mean the Flamer is indeed an excellent tool for solo games. But that's the thing, what happens when you bring a tool with horrible killing efficiency with the risk of igniting teammates outside solo games?

Despite what some people desperately attempt to deny, the Flamer already had a relatively high risk of ignition before the update. The "grace period" of practically no friendly fire damage before ignition only gets much smaller as you go higher in difficulty, and depending on how reckless (or in other words, how little the player cares about their teammates) the flamer user is, that grace period only gets even smaller (being able to dish out more friendly fire damage means less room for mistakes).

So when you use the Flamer in a playstyle that completely disregards the presence of teammates (as if you are using a Tesla Cannon, a weapon that never deals friendly fire), you will be depending its effectiveness entirely on how much grace period you have.

And what happens when you get used to its effectiveness/grace period on a lower difficulty, and then be met with a different grace period on a higher difficulty? (Or hell, simply starting to forget about how much grace period you have)

Do you think it is easier to pick a completely different weapon on a higher difficulty than you were used to, or is it easier to completely forget about teammates and use it like how you were already using it so its effectiveness stays "consistent?"
Lastly, do you think most players chose the former, or the latter?
(Not trick questions. Genuinely give these some thoughts)

Flamer isn't just directly harmful to teammates when played in a selfish fashion, it's also passively harming the team.

When your weapon has horrible damage and can only hinder the drones at mass, where does that leave your teammates?
Hindering doesn't mean disabling the drones. They are still drones who can do harm, especially on higher difficulties. When the drones approach your teammates, ignited or not, do you fire your flamer at the drones close to your teammates and risk igniting your teammates? Or do you leave your teammates to take care of the drones themselves, something they would have needed to do anyway with or without you? Does the latter mean you are literally useless?


Some may argue that since the flamer is so dangerous around teammates, they should just solo rush ahead with the flamer so they have no teammates to ignite, right?

Even without considering the fact that this is much harder to pull off on higher difficulties (but also needlessly difficult due to either Tech requirements or simply killing efficiency for events such as holdouts), you would be triggering all the map triggers pre-maturely without the team being ready for them.
You are practically making the game harder for your team with basically no benefits in return.
Now, solo rushing isn't exclusive to flamers. Grenade Launchers can do the same thing, most of the time much easier in the hands of a skilled player. But it is a globally hated behavior no matter at what difficulty by what skill level of a player. It's just that the Flamer, even though it may not be as strong, happens to be the easiest option and effective on low difficulties.


Because all of the harm Flamer does, both directly and indirectly, can be practically neglected by doing one simple thing: become one of them by using a flamer yourself, in the exact same way.

Should you ever get ignited by someone else, you can fix it with a simple tap of the flamer's alt-fire extinguisher to put yourself out. Should you ever have anyone rushing ahead of you with a flamer, although not as easy, you can get through all the drones spawned by the triggered triggers by using the flamer in the exact same way.

The only way for a team to survive the damage caused by a reckless flamer user is to all become flamer users, and where better to learn the playstyle from than the live example wrecking the lobby.

And so it spreads.

Inexperienced players by now may be asking the question, if the harmful things a flamer can do can be neglected by using a flamer yourself, why not just have everyone use a flamer?

First of all, even disregarding just how insanely boring such a playstyle is for many people (either immediately or after a while), it just doesn't work on higher difficulties, especially on maps with any sort of hold-out events where killing efficiency is demanded (because, shockers, not every map is designed to allow anyone to kite everything throughout the whole mission).
(I have sometimes seen some skilled players solo certain maps on high difficulties with the flamer as one of the weapons by going through some tedious process of kiting the enemies all over the map. I don't know at that point if you are the one playing the game or the game is the one playing you, but I do know that this isn't the point and however you play the game by yourself is irreverent to this topic.)

The increase in difficulty demands one simple thing: teamwork (more specifically, organized teamwork).
Yes, I know, very scary. Who would have known those exist.
But if you have watched enough veteran players in action together, sooner or later you would've noticed a pattern. A pattern where every player has a specific role. A pattern where every marine has a "meta" loadout as a go-to option.

What those patterns are and what is this "meta" is a topic you are more than welcome to look into on your own. It isn't important in this topic though.
What is important is that I want you to imagine a lobby with an organized team where every team member has a dedicated role, with unique ways of working with other team members, just to have some random player barge into the lobby, grab the flamer, and either light everyone on fire due to the higher difficulty's smaller grace period (or non-existent grace period on difficulties like ASBI), or just rush their way through everything until it works.

Triggers triggered pre-maturely, unasked-for ignitions to worry about, and having to go out of your way to either explain why the flamer user should stop doing what they're doing (which isn't easy, just by looking at how long this guide is), or vote kick that player and get insulted for being "toxic."
Do you consider this to be a friendly interaction that can never spark any sort of hate and stereotyping between different skill levels of players?

You now have these flamer users stubbornly sticking to flamers because of how much it keeps themselves safe, and how teammates they have screwed over can then spectate how awesome they are when they solo rush through easy maps on low difficulties.

Then you have the veteran players who already learned (or average players starting to learn) the importance of cooperation, and strayed away from the weapon that's only good for being selfish.

The flamer users believe they can get away with anything thanks to the grace period, even if they are much smaller than they imagine.
Over time these average players begin to stereotype all veterans as these "toxic" players who always kick newer players because they are not cool enough for their Grenade Launcher spamming, which isn't exactly easy without help from teammates.

The veteran players begin to stereotype all average players as players who never listen (intended or not, you indeed have a lot of people who just straight up won't listen or cannot understand what's being told).
Over time veteran players just begin to assume average players have no place in higher difficulties.
Due to the game's nature, a bad teammate is far worse than no teammate. Veteran players either be forced to kick the newer players after their explanations fall on deaf ears, or just quit the lobby.

The point is, even though the stereotyping can lead to players taking the blame when they do not deserve to, it's not going to stop when you have this weird selfish playstyle contributing to it.
The playstyle is toxic, and it brews toxicity between all the different types of players.

Before I get into details, I would like to first talk about the results.
Ever since the update, I have observed and begun to see far fewer reckless flamer users. Far fewer players taking their chances with the grace period (because, you know, it no longer exists).
So whatever the reason why it worked, we can first get the statement "it can only make things worse" out of the way.

Now, let's talk about the reasons behind such a change.

First of all, think about how friendly fire normally works for all the other weapons.
No other weapons ever had any sort of "grace periods" where they deal no friendly fire until they do.
Without hardcore friendly fire, all weapons immediately begin dealing damage, starting from a small amount (but is damage nonetheless) before ramping up, should the friendly fire continue in a short span of time.
We already covered why Flamer's grace period prior to the update was one of the main contributing factors to its issues, and it was the only weapon that had such behavior, even on hardcore friendly fire.

Flamer's instant ignition unifies its behavior across all difficulties and matches the behavior of the rest of the entire arsenal.
And because the ignition now also scales with difficulty, just like how all the other weapons' friendly fire does, the statement of "flamer now always feels like hardcore friendly fire" and "flamer is now more lethal to teammates than anything else" are invalid, because it is merely matching its behavior with what already exists.
I have also seen some arguments saying if you let your teammate burn through the whole duration, it does significant damage even on Normal. And to that, all I can ask is why would you watch your teammate burn through the whole duration in the first place? Especially considering how slow the fire burns on low difficulties like Normal.

Instant ignition makes it clear that Flamer is also a weapon that hurts your teammates when you fire it at them, just like all the other weapons. You hit your teammate, it hurts. No unique exception to friendly fire, no unique grace period for you to exploit. Friendly fire always existed, and Flamer is now no longer an exception.

With the flamer friendly fire now being much more responsive without the presence of any grace periods, there is no longer any room for confusion: You will hurt your teammate if you hit them, and when you get ignited, you know who did it.
No more wiggle-room for "it doesn't always hurt you" and the entire team will know exactly who is firing their weapon at their teammates.

No.
Seeing such statements only shows me how inexperienced these players are and how little they care about players around them.

Flamer already has an identity, a purpose, and it was never any sort of stun support near teammates.
When you are on your own, do whatever you want with it. This update has zero effects on solo flamer usage anyways.
But when you have teammates, you have the opportunity to take the role of hindering drones flanking the team at mass.

The best example is situations where your team must run through a very dangerous area, with little to no time to make stops (Deima Surface Bridge's starting area is a great example). While Grenade Launchers can take that role somewhat well in the hands of a skilled player, its sustainability is inferior due to its magazine size. This is where the flamer comes in: It's much easier to use, and you can hinder however many drones approaching your team from the flanks while you make a run for it along side your team. And because you are watching the flanks, you have no teammates to ignite.

This is a flamer playstyle that works across all difficulties long before the update, and the update has zero impact on such a way to use the flamer.
The consistent benefit of such a playstyle should be more than enough to prove that it already has a purpose that works well.

If you wish to play stun support within the proximity of your teammates, you already have a weapon dedicated to that very role, and works across all difficulties.
Just use Tesla Cannon.


Flamer is supposed to be held back by its risk of friendly fire, which it indeed did, but the grace period it used to have made that very unclear, making it look like it isn't and giving the weapon a confusing purpose it was never meant to have.

Tesla Cannon is the one that's supposed to be that close-quarter stun support without ever risking to damage teammates. Tesla Cannon is the one that's supposed to be compensated by that unique trait. The role belongs to the Tesla Cannon. That's the entire point of the weapon, the entire purpose it exists for.

No. If it is for you, that's your fault.

Even if you let your teammate burn throughout the entire duration of the afterburn (which why would you ever do), the total damage isn't lethal enough to guarantee deaths or low health, and it burns very slowly on low difficulties.
The main effect such instant ignition causes is visual cue. It warns you about firing your weapon at your teammate, and it warns your teammates that you are capable of firing your weapon at your teammates.
You can't grow a bad habit of exploiting a grace period if you are immediately warned about the consequences and how it potentially gets worse on higher difficulties with harsher punishment to mistakes.

And of course, you have multiple ways to extinguish teammates.
First of all, the flamer you used to ignite your teammate already has built-in extinguisher access via alt-fire. Should you ever have legit accidents that you did put efforts into preventing, you can always swiftly fix your mistake via your alt-fire.
Secondly, Medics' healing can extinguish burning with as little as one unit of healing. This can probably fix the problem even faster depending on the situation.
Last but not least, tossing a freeze grenade can put out all burning teammates within its blast radius. This is more costly for obvious reasons, but is also very fast at putting out multiple teammates, should the need ever arise.

There shouldn't be any complaints about how these are "annoying" or "expensive on the resources" because these were your own faults to begin with. You were supposed to prevent these from happening by using the flamer properly instead of recklessly, and these solutions are only meant for legit accidents, which do occasionally (but shouldn't be frequently) happen.

I've seen a couple of arguments talking about how the game is now no longer fun thanks to this update.
These comments have always irritated me, because this is practically insulting what the game has to offer.

One,
flamer is far from the only weapon the game has to offer. It's not even the strongest. The only thing it's best at is being versatile enough to keep yourself safe, at the expense of every teammate who dares to be near you.
Organized teamwork is the most reliable way of conquering every difficulty in the game, and the lower difficulty gives more than enough breathing room for you to have fun with the more flexible weapon choices.

Two,
if the only way for you to have fun is to do so at the expense of others' fun (or join you to ruin more people's fun), then what justifies your way of having fun? Why do the devs not have all the rights in the world to choose to rid of one of the major sources of toxicity within the game's community?
When you talk about how you're now going to leave the game for good because you cannot have fun anymore, as an attempt to make the devs look bad, have you thought about the fact that the playstyle you insist on playing is exactly what the change is trying to rid of?

I have seen these talks about how flamer is now "annoying" to use.
Crazy idea, but how about stop using it? Such a playstyle literally lives by the generosity of the grace period the difficulty scaling used to offer.
All weapons deal friendly fire like they always do. Flamer's friendly fire behavior prior to the update was clearly unintentional. If the flamer's friendly fire behavior now matches the rest of the entire arsenal and you can no longer play the game, instead of the game's fault, doesn't that simply show just how much you were dependent on the unreliable exploit?
(Most may refer to this as simply "skill issue" but that's beside the point)

Reckless flamer usage had been a headache for so long.
So much toxicity stems from this very source.
Overall this update has already proven to be beneficial in the long-term for the health of the game, by successfully discouraging reckless flamer use (because nobody can get away with it anymore).

It shouldn't have made anything worse, because it scales with difficulty, just like all the other weapons' friendly fire.
There isn't supposed to be any fun to ruin because fun had at the expense of others' is nothing to be proud of to begin with.
The game is far more than just spewing flame everywhere and playing around the risk of igniting teammates.

What you decide to do about this update, as whoever you are, is entirely up to you.
This guide is here to inform you about what led to this update and arguments about it that are misleading.
However, since this change that a huge portion of the community longed for has already been proven to be effective, this update is here to stay.

Think of the flamer's behavior prior to the update as an unintended exploit (because it is) that was long overdue for a fix, and never had one until this update.
It was a tumor that had rooted deep into ASRD.
Ridding of it will hurt those who have grown used to exploiting it, but it's for the best.